Category Archives: London

Street photography is not a genre that I often associate myself with, and despite the fact that David Bate writes about genres as “not fixed, they are mutable. Genres are processes, which evolve and develop or mutate into hybrids”, I was stuck in a rut when it came to producing a set within the genre in black and white 35mm film. Since the Gezi Park Riots in the summer of 2013 in Istanbul, I stayed away from compositions that were far too out of my own control, perhaps I was becoming, if not, became a control freak.

Since leaving my medical career behind, I never looked back and whilst not even thinking about my life back then, a friend of mine suggested that I should not waste what I have learnt in those 8 years and suggested that I could somehow incorporate that knowledge or experience to my photographic work. So what did I learn from my past career? One thing that is very clear, don’t embark on a long journey that you do not feel absolutely passionate about; not having much time for yourself outside of your career becomes all too consuming when you don’t enjoy what you do. But apart from this generic textbook life lesson, I did learn that hospitals are peculiar places.

Yes, hospitals are peculiar. There was this one time when I saw a man walking down the corridor of a psychiatric hospital with a hawk on his shoulder. I was so shocked that I needed to verify what I was seeing with a colleague of mine. The following few days we were confronted by many avian references dotted around. In another hospital there was an elevator of doom, that what we called it, as it did not have a door or any other way of securing one’s self- the perfect teen-slasher movie prop. Even the more mundane things were peculiar- how many people can imagine watching a South Asian dance performance right in the middle of the hospital or buying the freshest, most exotic fruits in the neighborhood?

Coming across peculiarities within a hospital is not something I could have controlled as most happened by chance, but I was able to find things or places within grounds of several hospitals that many would not imagine that it belonged. The project that started with just photographing the people outside of hospitals quickly became about the unexpected, the Non-Hospital Scenes.

Ever since I modelled in a live installation piece in Barbican by Reza Aramesh in late 2007 for the “Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now”show, the architecture of The Barbican and its surrounding area has interested me. The large concrete structures demand authority and bang their fists on the table in an uncontrolled and clumsy manner.

To pay homage to the retro Polaroid with its wave of comeback, I purchased film from The Impossible Project to experiment. I wanted to take power back from the Brutal buildings and manicure the rough edged nails those fists had curled up inside their palms.

The short video here shows the process of making a “polaroid emulsion lift”.

If New York has its gentrified Meat Packing District, London has The Smithfield Market. The 140 years old market has been on site for over a thousand years. The slowly evolving market starts business at 3 am everyday excluding the weekends and Bank holidays.

G Lawrence Wholesale Meathas been very kind to open their doors to allow me to photograph on their super clean shop. The wonderfully fresh carcasses featured as the backdrop for the dress by Jaybeelyn Luna.

The design inspired by the spine was modelled by the talented artist Marjolaine Coste.

Hello my confidant. It has happened again and I don’t know who else to tell. It appears that you are the only one that will believe me or even listen in the first place. Again it was in the middle of my rest period that I found myself there, the location that I can‘t describe more accurately than “that world”.

It is the third time in this lunar cycle that I floated from my slumber to a place that lacks colour. This time I passively and reluctantly moved down a metallic sliding platform that penetrated a rhombus. There was someone else in front of me and as he moved into the rhombus, I saw someone else come out of it.

I came across a girl that was stuck inside a box. She sat at the edge of it, motionless apart from her hands, focusing on a small trinket that was transmitting visions and sounds. From time to time she gazed to a white domed palace with a certain longing. I believed that she was entrapped there and her person of interest was in the palace trying to communicate through her trinket.

I walked out of the invisible doors and saw a creature that reminded me of the pests that hide in our homes. It hopped towards me as I reached out and travelled through the air, lacking grace or charm. It flew past a most bizarre structure of interlinked squares of dead trees that reached nowhere. I did not understand its function or what the two women on top of it were doing.

I followed the direction of the thick strand of liquid with its never-ending motion towards a cold metallic structure. My eyes instinctively travelled up to reveal the first letter of my name, Kyiru… Could this be a coincidence or was there a higher power taking me there? With this question that made me half scared and half excited, I glanced back over the metal lines uncovering the glass city where I woke up in and continued forward.

I continued forward through a dark tunnel resembling the metal platform that brought me there. The darkness was interrupted regularly with light sources, revealing interlinked squares and triangles. I was taken aback when I noticed a glowing globe hanging at the edge of the tunnel exit. What further surprised me was that there was someone inside a globe appearing larger and larger with small movements of his legs until he vanished and appeared in front of me. The only logical explanation that I have is he travelled through the globe portal and that he is very used to this mode of transport, hence his lack of expression in response to my perplexed face.

Another curious fact was the abundance of water. Apart from that giant moving strand, I could feel some on my face. It was as if the water was able to fly but only in one direction. Also something that would really impress the alchemists back home is that I’ve seen a see-thorough rock slowly turn into water. This rock had a symbol on it and it felt very very cold.

Like the vertically flying water, I too moved in one direction. I don’t know why I chose to follow this route but it lead me into a building whose grandiosity suggested that it was a palace lacking security guards or any other means of selecting who is worthy to enter it. The large groups of people moving independently like stray pockets of magic pushed me through a small gate. My curiosity took the best of me and I jumped into a moving roofed metallic platform with circular feet that spun. It moved along a bed of metal lines that seemed to go on endlessly and was only interrupted in very short intervals by smaller lines perpendicular to it.

The inside of this roofed platform was spacious and was populated with cushioned seats. Behind me I heard voices speaking in another tongue, and through the little crevice between the seats I started watching them. Although it was the first time that I had seen them during that voyage, I could not shake off the feeling that we had met before. As I tried to remember when I had encountered this man with the wavy hair, crinkled skin and velvet voice, he looked at me with his gentle eyes and once again I found myself back in my small humble lodgings, back in “my world”, yet another time.